Rod Stewart Mocks Elton John’s Retirement Tour as ‘Dishonest’

No matter how many extra dates Elton John ends up adding to his farewell tour, it looks like we probably shouldn't expect to see any guest appearances from Rod Stewart along the way.

Asked about John's three-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Stewart scoffed at the idea, noting that he'd reached out to John to poke fun at him about it, but John didn't seem to want to play along.

Needless to say, Stewart's fans shouldn't look forward to a similarly sprawling retirement tour from him. "If I do retire, I won’t make an announcement. I’ll just fade away," he insisted. "I don’t think this is a big deal. It stinks of selling tickets." In fact, as Stewart argued with his fellow guest Cyndi Lauper, he sees John's lengthy farewell tour as a transparent attempt to take advantage of his fan base — and a betrayal of the music, too. "It’s dishonest," he added. "It’s not rock 'n' roll."

Stewart and John have traded public barbs plenty of times in the past, so there's little reason to think this latest round is anything more serious than good-natured ribbing. It wasn't too long ago that John used a talk show appearance of his own to goof on Stewart for his seemingly endless series of American songbook albums, complaining that his own record company didn't want him to follow suit.

"They're a very good record company," said John. "But they wanted me to make Christmas albums, cover albums, Motown records, but that's so silly, you know? I'll leave that to Rod Stewart and people like that."